NeoTool is a bash script which makes use of zenity to provide a friendly GUI frontend to some common management tasks. It is aimed at being very intuitive and easy to use, and flexible enough to make it usefull in a wide variety of circumstances.

NeoTool is a bash script which makes use of zenity to provide a friendly GUI frontend to some common management tasks. It is aimed at being very intuitive and easy to use, and flexible enough to make it usefull in a wide variety of circumstances.

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* rootfs can be backed up to either a flashable image or a tar archive

* rootfs can be backed up to either a flashable image or a tar archive

* most / all configuration can be done via the GUI

* most / all configuration can be done via the GUI

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== Screenshots ==

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[[Image:NeoTool.png|NeoTool opening screen]]

== Download / Releases ==

== Download / Releases ==

Revision as of 21:04, 17 September 2008

Contents

NeoTool

NeoTool is a bash script which makes use of zenity to provide a friendly GUI frontend to some common management tasks. It is aimed at being very intuitive and easy to use, and flexible enough to make it usefull in a wide variety of circumstances.

Features

The main features of NeoTool are:

Ability to flash your Neo via a GUI

Ability to flash multiple images at once (for example, flash rootfs and the kernel at the same time)

Screenshots

Download / Releases

When a new version is released it will be announced on the community mailing list, and on this page.

Requirements

The software prerequisites for NeoTool should be installed on most modern linux systems by default:

bash

zenity

which

awk

dfu-util is required to be able to flash your Neo, but NeoTool is able to download this automatically.

Optional

pipe viewer (pv), shows display while backing up rootfs

to backup rootfs, you need to have a USB networking configured and working

mkfs-jffs2 needs to be installed on your neo to backup rootfs to a flashable image (type 'opkg install mkfs-jffs2' in ssh)

While not a requirement, backing up rootfs is much less painful if you set up an authorized_keys entry for your host on your Neo. To do this, run 'ssh-keygen' (preferrably as root) on your host, and then copy the contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub on your host into /home/root/.ssh/authorized_keys on your freerunner

Revision History

09-Sep-2008

- ability to flash more than one image at once - the 'what do you wanna
flash' now has checkboxes instead of radio buttons, and all your
selections are flashed one after the other. (which i find very handy,
stops the FR powering down while you're typing the next dfu-util
command, or locating the next image - works great for flashing a new
distro & kernel). if an error occurs, subsequent files will not be flashed.

- more confirmation / idiot-proofing - it now tells you what you're
doing much more clearly (i.e: "about to flash Kernel with /foo/bar.bin,
rootfs with /foo/bar.jffs". allows you to confirm that you chose the
right images). also the 'choose file' dialogs tell you what you're
browsing for

- ability for users to press 'cancel' at the various dialogs and exit
gracefully.

- checks that dfu-util exists and is executable. I moved my dfu-util to
/usr/local/bin, so it looks there first, but it will also check the
current directory and prompt if it can't find it

- I wasn't a fan of patching dfu-util, and the pulsating zenity progress
dialog drags my (prehistoric) PC to a crawl, so I disabled the progress
bar and use the text output of dfu-util instead.

12-Sep-2008 (v1.0)

- Utility now has the ability to flash the splash image as per request

- Utility can now also backup your device to flashable rootfs / kernel images (david might like this for building FDOM images)

- Configurification is loaded on startup and saved in /etc/frutil (you can only modify settings if you run it as root)

- more idiot proofing - uses 'which' to find dfu-util, checks to ensure it's being run as root, checks that zenity is installed on the host, checks that you have mkfs.jffs2 installed before backing up, checks that you have pv installed and acts accordingly (by either using it or not during the backup [this is not properly tested because I don't have pv, please report]), and possibly other stuff I've forgotten about.

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NeoTool

NeoTool is a bash script which makes use of zenity to provide a friendly GUI frontend to some common management tasks. It is aimed at being very intuitive and easy to use, and flexible enough to make it usefull in a wide variety of circumstances.

Features

The main features of NeoTool are:

Ability to flash your Neo via a GUI

Ability to flash multiple images at once (for example, flash rootfs and the kernel at the same time)

Download / Releases

When a new version is released it will be announced on the community mailing list, and on this page.

Requirements

The software prerequisites for NeoTool should be installed on most modern linux systems by default:

bash

zenity

which

awk

dfu-util is required to be able to flash your Neo, but NeoTool is able to download this automatically.

Optional

pipe viewer (pv), shows display while backing up rootfs

to backup rootfs, you need to have a USB networking configured and working

mkfs-jffs2 needs to be installed on your neo to backup rootfs to a flashable image (type 'opkg install mkfs-jffs2' in ssh)

While not a requirement, backing up rootfs is much less painful if you set up an authorized_keys entry for your host on your Neo. To do this, run 'ssh-keygen' (preferrably as root) on your host, and then copy the contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub on your host into /home/root/.ssh/authorized_keys on your freerunner

Revision History

09-Sep-2008

- ability to flash more than one image at once - the 'what do you wanna
flash' now has checkboxes instead of radio buttons, and all your
selections are flashed one after the other. (which i find very handy,
stops the FR powering down while you're typing the next dfu-util
command, or locating the next image - works great for flashing a new
distro & kernel). if an error occurs, subsequent files will not be flashed.

- more confirmation / idiot-proofing - it now tells you what you're
doing much more clearly (i.e: "about to flash Kernel with /foo/bar.bin,
rootfs with /foo/bar.jffs". allows you to confirm that you chose the
right images). also the 'choose file' dialogs tell you what you're
browsing for

- ability for users to press 'cancel' at the various dialogs and exit
gracefully.

- checks that dfu-util exists and is executable. I moved my dfu-util to
/usr/local/bin, so it looks there first, but it will also check the
current directory and prompt if it can't find it

- I wasn't a fan of patching dfu-util, and the pulsating zenity progress
dialog drags my (prehistoric) PC to a crawl, so I disabled the progress
bar and use the text output of dfu-util instead.

12-Sep-2008 (v1.0)

- Utility now has the ability to flash the splash image as per request

- Utility can now also backup your device to flashable rootfs / kernel images (david might like this for building FDOM images)

- Configurification is loaded on startup and saved in /etc/frutil (you can only modify settings if you run it as root)

- more idiot proofing - uses 'which' to find dfu-util, checks to ensure it's being run as root, checks that zenity is installed on the host, checks that you have mkfs.jffs2 installed before backing up, checks that you have pv installed and acts accordingly (by either using it or not during the backup [this is not properly tested because I don't have pv, please report]), and possibly other stuff I've forgotten about.